“Literature is mostly about having sex and not having children. Life is the other way around”. An early effort at a campus novel with the customary preoccupation with catholicism and birth control that David Lodge has made his eternal theme. A quite funny look at a young academic struggling with research and the vagaries of academia but mostly with his 3 children and the fear that he will make his wife pregnant. Written at a time when there was hope that the church might revisit its hard line on contraception, the story shows the almost debilitating effect of the Safe or Rhythm methods on young couples who try to adhere to this ludicrous attitude to birth control. Many comic situations ensue.

Also very interesting are the parodies and pastiches of everyone from Conrad to Malcolm Bradbury and even James Joyce. Graham Greene would term this an entertainment and the wordplay lives up to that term.